And now, two films where someone goes to the police for help in finding a vanished lover, but gets turned away for lack of evidence -- at least initially. In one, you already know the plot; in the other, we can hardly say a thing without spoiling it.
Grade: D+
Well, as we're drawing near the end of the Night Screams subset of the 250-pack (only six left!), it's fair enough to have a film that gives us a real-deal, full-throated night scream.
Of course you already know the plot of The Tell-Tale Heart -- and if somehow you don't, then the opening scene's pulsing floorboards and thumping bass drums constitute advance notice (and a literal flash-forward). It even comes with a warning:
So we have Laurence Payne as Edgar (ha ha), the painfully shy librarian, smitten at first sight by the charms of new neighbor Betty (Adrienne Corri) whom he creepily spies on from his window.
For the inside scoop on Betty, Edgar hits up her landlady (Annette Carell), whose fine-featured face somehow took us by surprise, if only for its unexpected unmatronliness. She looks more like an aristocratic German woman in her mid-thirties, or maybe a teacher at a high-end boarding school, than a working-class property manager.
Anyway, Betty agrees to go out with Edgar, and the ensuing date rivals "Ralph Wiggum walks Lisa Simpson home" for sheer awkwardness.
Still, Betty is the very picture of patience and tolerance -- until Edgar abruptly puts the moves on her at her doorstep. It's pretty gross, and while the idea is clearly to keep Edgar from becoming too sympathetic a character, it also exhausts our ability to care that much about his plight.
On the other hand, he has this great friend, Carl. Everyone likes Carl!
From the moment Edgar starts heaping praise on his friend's head, we know where this is inevitably going, the only mystery being whether the ultimate body count is 1, 2, or 3. The real question is, will getting there be half the fun, or not?
Well, the answer in this case is mostly "not". Though atmospheric and competently made, The Tell-Tale Heart is too obvious for its own good, and too emotionally uninvolving to succeed. The score is particularly heavy-handed, with silly "ba-woomp!" timpani glisses that, in trying to evoke some transfigured version of a heartbeat, end up being just a bit too on the nose.
If we already know what's going to happen, where's the tension in watching Edgar's mind unravel? Is sheer expectation meant to be enough here?
The Tell-Tale Heart does attempt a last-minute Hail Mary to solve its central problem, but as with any other work of fiction that tries the same thing, it just leaves the audience feeling baffled and betrayed. What's left is, as so often the case, a passel of interesting faces, like this overly attached barfly/prostitute --
-- and this blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance by Frank Thornton, aka Captain Peacock from Are You Being Served?, as a barman:
[aka La Baby Sitter, Scar Tissue, etc.]
Grade: C
It's very difficult to know how to talk about Wanted: Babysitter without completely spoiling it. One thing to say upfront is that this was indeed a color production and is available elsewhere in full color, but -- much like Hannah, Queen of the Vampires -- the Mill Creek copy is in black-and-white for some reason.
Then again, when you're talking about one of the most confusing movies we've seen in recent memory, perhaps the black-and-white isn't such a bad thing -- helping the film to seem unmoored and surreal, rather than just muddled. (It also takes the edge off the score's more saccharine moments.)
There's some real star power aboard in Wanted: Babysitter, like:
- Maria Schneider, whom you know from that movie (and kudos for her witty remark that she only cooks with olive oil now);
- Vic Morrow, whom you know because he died in that horrible helicopter accident;
- and Robert Vaughn, whom you know because his picture is in the dictionary next to the word "glower".
As Michelle, a French sculptor living and working in Rome, Schneider seems likely to be the protagonist. But a lot of the film's initial attention goes to Ann (Sydne Rome), a wounded, vengeful actress whose secrets comprise the movie's two titles (more or less).
Wanted: Babysitter tanked on release, and was given an especially harsh rating by Leonard Maltin, who dismissed it as a "misfired melodrama" with "non-acting" from Schneider. He also criticizes the "miscasting of chubby Italian comedian Renato Pozzetto" as Michelle's boyfriend, which is a fair cop -- his presence is weird and hard to parse, though it's oddly appealing that the guy in her corner is a schlubby albeit determined goofball. Chubby guys with dad bods can be heroes too, after all.
It's quite obvious that the fragmented narrative in Wanted: Babysitter is a deliberate stylistic choice whose consequences, love 'em or hate 'em, are central to the film's structure.
However, the jury's still out when it comes to the movie's persistent failure to establish a clear sense of place -- by which we mean that we often didn't understand where the hell we were, and worse yet, sometimes thought we were in one place before realizing we'd been in another for a good five minutes.
So, is this an intentional move, a question of style...or a sign of directorial incompetence and/or laziness? (Or maybe it's the black-and-white?)
In the midst of all this, we have bunnies, puppies --
-- and a young boy named Boots, which when written out has about the same resonance as "a homeless girl named Dave" (speaking of Britcoms). The child actor playing Boots even gets his very own "introducing John Whittington" moment in the credits, so naturally he doesn't have any other roles to his credit. Maybe he's an assistant manager at a car wash now.
We can tell you that Wanted: Babysitter is a complex, thoughtful movie of the kind that probably rewards multiple viewings. Even watching just the first few minutes over again, we were able to catch numerous details that eluded us -- no doubt intentionally -- on our first pass. It's always nice to watch a film that assumes its viewers are smart, and gives itself permission to imply a great deal more than it says outright. (Think of the brief exchange in Citizen Kane that lays bare the anti-Semitism of his first wife, even though the word "Jew" is never uttered.)
If the movie does have a fatal flaw, though, it probably is somewhere in that combination of Schneider and Pozzetto, especially the former. In situations where Michelle ought to display a sense of urgency and purpose, she instead seems detached and resigned -- so much so that one ends up rolling one's eyes, swearing at the screen, or simply losing one's suspension of disbelief.
Anyway, here's a funny picture of Robert Vaughn in period costume.
And here's a bunny.
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